Suction cups are used in vacuum transporting and/or lifting systems, wherein a plurality of suction-cups are provided on a conveyor belt or other transporting devices for lifting and/or transporting goods. Examples of technical fields employing vacuum transporting and/or lifting systems using conveyor belts or other devices provided with a plurality of suction-cups are industrial baking equipment. Particular applications of industrial baking equipment are so-called “depanners” for high volume production of bakery products, wherein a vacuum removal system having suction cups mounted on a conveyor belt are provided for lifting (“depanning”) bakery products from a pan. But, vacuum transporting and/lifting systems having suction-cups provided on a conveyor belt or other transporting devices for lifting and/or transporting goods are also known for other technical fields of application.
The suction cups can be mounted to the conveyor belt or to another suitable transporting device by means of suction cup fittings for holding the suction cups when assembled/mounted to the conveyor belt. Since the number of fittings and suction cups are typically (very) large, assembling/disassembling typically involves time-consuming work, say a whole day or even longer to shift cups. Typically, when servicing or repairing the suction cups, the suction cups are removed from the fittings by an operator or service personnel, typically manually. The fittings available can be of so-called “threaded” or “push-on” type. As regards the “threaded fittings”, the suction cups have to be screwed onto these when assembling (mounting) the suctions cups to the fittings.
A drawback with fittings of threaded type is time-consuming assembling/disassembling, in particular if the number of fittings and suction cups are (very) high since typically each suction cup has to be screwed or unscrewed manually and a large number of suction cups thus imply much manual labour in total.
Therefore, other types of fittings have found use such as fittings of “push-on” type, wherein the suction cups are mounted/assembled to the fittings by an operator or service personnel pushing the suction cups onto the fitting and dismounted/disassembled by pulling the suction cups off the fittings. A drawback is however, that also this procedure may be labour intensive and time-consuming if assembling/disassembling is cumbersome. Sometimes the suction cups are difficult to dismount/mount even for a skilled operator or service personnel. Another drawback is that suction cups may come loose during operation of the transporting/lifting system if the fittings and suction cups are not assembled properly or if the assembly is not resistant enough, for instance to forces acting on the suction cups assembled during operation of the transporting and/or lifting system. Thus, it is normally important that the suction cups are also properly mounted and that the fitting is able to hold the cups firmly and resistant enough to all types of forces acting thereon.